US diplomats visited a Christian Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank yesterday following attacks by militant Israeli settlers on European diplomats and an American photojournalist in the previous two days.
Riley Barnes, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour, Brian Burch, US ambassador to the Holy See, and a number of other diplomats visited the Latin Convent church and were expected to meet members of the Christian community in Taybeh.
Belgian, French and Polish diplomats, along with a French mayor and Palestinian civilians, had been attacked near Taybeh on Saturday by masked Israeli settlers.
The previous day, Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine was taken to hospital after being assaulted while covering a Palestinian olive harvest near another West Bank village.
The diplomats’ visit coincided with US President Donald Trump endorsing his ally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for Israel’s parliamentary election on October 27.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee attended a settler conference in the West Bank yesterday.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian and longtime supporter of Israel, earlier wrote on X calling for ‘those who attacked’ the Washington Post photojournalist, a US citizen, to be jailed.
Trump has expressed his opposition to Israeli annexation of the West Bank, but his administration has put little pressure on Netanyahu’s right-wing, pro-settler government to change its policy.
UN bodies and most countries deem the settlements illegal under international law, but Israel rejects this, viewing the territory as disputed rather than occupied.
While Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and the Israeli military both blamed ‘Israeli rioters’ for the attack on the diplomats, Netanyahu, whose coalition is projected to lose its governing majority, has been more circumspect.
He has said the diplomats entered a ‘sensitive area with a history of confrontations without prior co-ordination’ with the Israeli military, and that the facts of the attack on Levine are ‘unclear’.
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